


you can't stop a flower in bloom

by akaashiinperiodclothing (sirbeatrix)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Books, Classical Music, Established Relationship, M/M, Mild BDSM, Polyamory, domestic life, reference to bdsm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 07:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14397510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirbeatrix/pseuds/akaashiinperiodclothing
Summary: a night in the life of a polyamorous square.





	you can't stop a flower in bloom

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading. if you'd like to read more fics like this, let me know.

"You're dating yourself."

Akiteru has an unsavory habit of starting heavy conversations apropos of nothing.

Sniffing out a laugh, Tsukishima nudges his head against the frosted pane of the passenger side window. He considers switching the radio on, but within seconds his brother would shut it off.

"You ever look into a bathroom mirror and see yourself reflected into infinity?"

Scowling at himself in the overhead mirror, Tsukishima funnels darkening blond hair through long fingers. He's due for a cut. Maybe he and Akaashi can see Kozuka again and go out for ramen in the chronically cramped joint next door to the barber shoppe.

"That about sums up your situation."

His brother rounds the ostentatiously clean silver Toyota through a worrying sliver of road that bleeds into the early evening traffic.

Tsukishima had thought it might take years before a fondness for Tokyo overwhelmed him at the sight of the tower from the overpass. In the handful of weeks he's spent at his parent's house since his move into Akaashi and Kenma's apartment, the tug of home has wound a puzzle of thread around his heart, pure in the beauty of its complexity.

Threatening to unravel into tangled multitudes, the threads in his chest seize when he spies Akaashi, dark eyes alight with the incandescent spirals of candles, among the myopic swirl of Christmas shoppers pouring en masse down the sidewalk.

His gaze sharpening, Akiteru swerves the car into a generous indent of the road near the apartment complex. In seconds, Akaashi's there, peeking through the driver's open window, the brandished teeth of the wind laying waste to his billowing mackintosh.

Shaking, he says, "Come in, Akiteru-san. We've got dinner on the burner. Beef stew."

Not for one minute does Tsukishima believe he can trust his brother with the truth: that three men, including himself, love this angel standing in the cold, and that Akaashi in return loves them.

"Let me park the car," Akaashi says, his dark eyes imploring in a way tha quickens Tsukishima's heart. "Go on up so Kenma-san knows you're back, dear." 

Smiling through closed lips, Akiteru grips the open window.

"That's kind of you," he says, "but I don't think my brother can stand one more minute of my company."

Scoffing in agreement, Tsukishima slides out of the car, slamming the door with a gratuitous finality. Opening the trunk, Akaashi removes his rolling black suitcase with the chipped leather handle. Gently closing the lid, he taps on the back window, waving as Akiteru zooms into the congested convergence of cars, almost as if he can't leave fast enough.

Staring out into the monochromatic blend of cars, Akaashi says, "You're so certain you're hiding from me; I see how you feel about him."

Eros, observing from on high, overwhelms him as he pulls Akaashi into his arms, inhaling his faraway scent of flyblown lavender. Kissing the frost crystalizing his dark curls, Tsukishima breathes the words against his neck.

"How can he not call you family, Keiji?"

Shrugging, Akaashi contorts himself free from their embrace, buttoning the broad black buttons of his rumpled tan mackintosh.

"Kenma-san's done enough waiting," he says. "Up we go."

Swiping steam from his glasses with the hem of his dark wool coat, Tsukishima hums a quiet refrain to himself. Trailing behind Akaashi, he slides his dark glasses back into place and with his unoccupied hand overpowers the silken dip of Akaashi's jawbone. Tilting his chin up, Tsukishima senses the tension beneath his touch slackening into a taut rope of want.

"Bought us some new restraints," Akaashi says, his voice evanescent. "Wait for Kenma-san."

Losening his grip, Tsukishima brushes his fingertip across Akaashi's bottom lip.

"I thought Kenma disapproved?"

"Ask him yourself. Our lives don't stop when your absence disrupts our planetary orbit, Kei-san."

"Curse you."

They ride the rickety elevator with an elderly couple swaddled in trim Uniqlo down coats up to the thirteenth floor. Naturally, Akaashi carries on a friendly discourse with them, their being close friends of his childhood violin teacher.

"We'll email from time to time," he says, exiting the elevator behind Tsukishima. Opening the door of apartment 1305, he calls out to Kenma as they remove their scuffed winter boots at the _genkan_.

Incrementally, their living space has become a stationary extension of themselves. Near the living room windows, a music stand displaying an open book of handwritten notes marks the practice space of the apartment's fourth resident, Kunimi. Next to the _kotatsu_ , a cozy felt chair slums over a pile of newly bought PS4 games, a small grey controller plugged into the television resting on the creamy carpeted floor. All around the living room, books line the walls, most of them non-fiction, save for Dune and a volume of Ursula K. Le Guin's short stories bound in fragile plastic wrap. Tsukishima has one bookshelf for himself. Halfway full of books dedicated to his double major, Marine Biology and Paeleontology, the space occupied most recently belongs to climate change. Reading about the Barrier Reef's dying a slow death had deadened any amount of hope to the point where making love to Akaashi until neither of them left their bed the next day only somewhat alleviated his grief.

Kenma, much to Tsukishima's amusement wearing the strawberry-patterned apron he'd bought on a whim over an oversized red sweater and baggy yellow leisure pants, turns from the gurgling stew.

"I'm giving it one minute more."

Akaashi nods, more to himself than to Kenma, and walks over to an organized arrangement of clutter on an island affixed to the refrigerator.

"How did the trip go, Kei?" Kenma says.

Resisiting the urge to knead his partner's soft tundra of moonlit hair, Tsukishima sighs through his teeth.

"Plenty of time to pick apart that disaster later. For now, I want to enjoy your meal."

"And, indeed, you shall."

Pressing a swift kiss into Kenma's flushed cheek, Akaashi curls an arm around his waist and holds him close. "Remember, however, that we have Akira-san's Christmas concert tonight. No harm in getting your sad tale out of the way in one fell swoop."

"Shit. I blanked again."

What a lie. Akaashi and Kenma's boyfriend bugs the crap out of him, and he can't for the life of him puzzle out why. So, like his mother did for the entire duration of his visit, he avoids any and all mention of the problem until it resurfaces with such a pyroclastic flow of dread he can no longer withdraw into the makeshift shelter of his thoughts.

Switching off the burner, Kenma takes a cursory sip of the stew with an old wooden ladle while Akaashi fetches three bowls of lapis lazuli pottery from the glass cabinets over the stove. Taking them from his hands, Tsukishima sets them around the small round table clothed in pale green cloth and positions the silverware already laid out in the center, the blossoming flowers decorating the handles deeming them an extravagance. Ladling the stew in his bowl, Kenma shoots him a dark look.

His partner's known his feelings about Kunimi since day one: yanking the guy on a sudden errand when Tsukishima dug into him about his science knowledge when the usurper dared to paw through his books, exploding when Tsukishima dismissed the wagyu beef Kunimi grilled over a bed of salmon and rice by getting up halfway through to take some bullshit phone call and upon his return thirty minutes later offering the chef the rest. Then again, who in their right mind would forgive him?

They eat in silence, Kenma eating more rapidly than usual to afford some time for changing his clothes. Looming, the fourth chair's white noise deafens Tsukishima's thoughts as Akaashi calls his friend Bokuto, wishing him good luck for a job interview at his Ginza law firm.

* * *

Christmas sings in the warm buzz of chatter drifting over their heads as they amble at their leisure to Tokyo College of Music. They've left themselves enough time to stop at their favorite bakery, glowing from the inside with the nostalgic radiance of elegant streetlamps plucked from a Parisian Metro station. Framed Mucha prints line the absinthe green walls, reminding Tsukishima that he's meant to call his friend Tadashi at the Art Institute. Sipping at his cocoa, he stretches one long leg under the table in an effort to slide the worn edge of his black boot along the slim strip of skin above Akaashi's cheerful wool socks. Entwining their hands, he asks Akaashi what Bokuto's interview for the law firm entails, Akaashi having worked there for several months now, as Kenma idly curls a finger around the collar of Tsukishima's coat and relieves him of a desperate itch.

A brief thought tempts him, that strangers might pick up on their intimacy, their existence in a planetary realm untethered by mortality. He smiles, goading the electric moon, emitting a curious smirk that immortalizes the angel in Akaashi's face.

"Ugh, you're so creepy, Kei," Kenma says, tightening his grip.

* * *

 

It takes some getting used to, the three of them constituting as the odd family out. Grandparents make up the majority of the audience in the dimly lit auditorium. Maybe some of them are in fact parents, but Tsukishima doesn't think on it for long before the orchestra assembles and a dark haired young man in a creased black suit runs away with his mind.

Deceptively unassuming, ferociously persuasive in enabling you to avoid him on a street choked with people and then glowering at your back, branding you with regret. Tsukishima can't look away.

The cello, an instrument he's cherished since he was a kid, when he first borrowed classical CDs from the Karasuno Library shared by the high school, peels itself apart with an aching unfurling of sound. Kunimi's hands, vibrating in time to their own methodical rhythm, skate as if set awhirl on ice. Even his suit begs you to look away, only to stop you dead. Up till now, Tsukishima has never attributed the words "Unbearably sexy" to hip-hugging black dress pants. But the way they craft an illusion of height around Kunimi's slender legs, the way they compliment his snug black blazer and his velvet swath of dark hair, possess Tsukishima with an urge to hurtle through time and wolf down every last bite of that mouthwatering meal and go back for more.

After the concert ends, they wait for Kunimi near the backstage door. He's one of the last to trickle out, tucked between a young man with intriguing eyebrows and their wiry friend with bright pink hair, the both of them hoisting colossal black cases over their shoulders. Kunimi evidently has left his cello behind.

"Catch you later, Akki," Eyebrows says. Winking, Pink Hair waves.

"You bet." Kunimi waves back. "See you later, Mattsun. Makki, behave yourself."

As his friends wander away to greet their families, the affected decorum leaks from Kunimi's posture as he deflates, collapsing into Akaashi and Kenma's outstretched arms. 

"Hey," Tsukishima says.

Rubbing an oncoming drowsiness from his eyes, Kunimi edges his teeth along his bottom lip, one dark eyebrow shooting up.

"Are you going to congratulate me like I'm Mozart enetertaining the king of France and then spurn me for some pressing business as per your modus operandi?"

Regret does not come close to pigeonholing Tsukishima's warring emotions.

"Nope," he says. Kunimi sighs into Kenma's wooly plaid shoulder.

"Thank hell."

Akaashi laughs, and a sudden shower of sunshine floods the hushed lobby.

* * *

On the walk home, Tsukishima asks Kunimi about how he came to love the cello. Listening to musicians talk about their passion usually fills him with a toxic lovechild of envy and lust, a maddening desire for a life he can't hope to live. Kunimi, however, instills him with a fierce pride in his laborious studies and nail-biting concerts. He's overcome a near impassable barrier of beaten self-esteem cemented into place by a domineering cello prodigy and risen above it with the help of a renowned conductor.

"Oikawa-san helped me rediscover myself. His best friend helped me, too. They're both great people."

"Oikawa-san scares me," Akaashi says. "I like Iwaizumi-san, though. We can have Oikawa-san over for dinner if Iwaizumi-san comes, too."

"I know for a fact they'll both love that."

Talk of dinner and what to buy at the supermarket on the morrow follows them into the toasty apartment. ("Heat's on too high," Kunimi says through a yawn.) The four of them slide their winter boots off at the genkan, replacing them with slippers, and shuffle over to the kotatsu despite encroaching heat. 

Tsukishima reminds Kunimi he'd best get used to the management screwing with their tolerance for heat around this time of year, and Kunimi bemoans his former living situation with Kindaichi (who, for the record, does not look like a mad composer on opium, though that's what his flute section leader and everyone else seems to think). Tsukishima laughs with his stomach and soon, they've eased into the comfortable exchange of stories and histories from lifetimes ago. Kenma, hard at work on Persona 5, forgets the world and himself while Akaashi pages through his beloved Le Guin paperback, situating clear wire rim glasses on his nose.

"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas?" Kunimi says, peering over the cover. "That one's my favorite." Akaashi smiles.

"Mine, too. It's also Kei-san's." Kenma nods.

"Our Kei even cried the first time he read it."

"Why would you say that, Kenma!"

"Because crying's a logical reaction to that story, and a moving one."

Kunimi's overcome with an uncontrollable laughter, melodious and mellifluous. Wiggling his slippers from his feet, Tsukishima brushes his bare toes against Kunimi's smooth ankle. Quieting, Kunimi leans across the flat expanse of the kotatsu, his eyes flickering shut as Tsukishima kisses the dark hair drooping in smooth wisps past his jawbone.

"What stopped you?" Kunimi says.

"My mom, I think. Her response when I told her I lived with two partners was, "So you just have sex all the fucking time?" Pun intended. I was so offended that I played all of the avoidance games I mastered in high school. And I lost them all to you, and I'm grateful."

Dabbing at make-believe tears with the pads of his fingers, Kenma smiles.

"I'm grateful, too," Kunimi says. "I kind of want to keep playing with you."


End file.
